Raised by Goan Catholics parents in Bombay, Maharashtra she studied under Eunice de Souza and became one of India's major English-language poets in the 1970s.
With fellow poets Santan Rodrigues and Raul D' Gama Rose, she established the Newground cooperative which published their works.
While studying in London, she published Skies of Design in 1985, which won the Asian Section of the Best First Book Commonwealth Poetry Prize.
[3] In 1985, while studying at the London College of Printing, she published a second collection of poems, Skies of Design, which won the Asian award under the Best First Book Commonwealth Poetry Prize.
[1][4] From the late 1980s to the mid-1990s, she worked as commissioning editor for the feminist Virago Press where she consulted with clients of colour and developed a large collection of Arab women's contributions to English-language writing in Opening the Gates (1980).